DUBAI: February 13, 2019. Emirates SkyCargo, which operates daily B777 freighter flights to Nairobi and a four times weekly service to Quito year-round, says it carried over 50,000 tonnes of flowers in 2018 with 27,000 tonnes from Kenya. 

Over 100,000 people in Ecuador and a further 500,000 in Kenya depend on the floriculture industry for their income and livelihoods.

In January this year the cargo division of Emirates added nine additional flights to its regular schedule to uplift over 2,200 tonnes of flowers from Nairobi and over 1,200 tonnes from Ecuador to Amsterdam in addition to using the belly capacity of passenger aircraft to support export markets in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.

Emirates SkyCargo also operated its first direct flight with flowers from Nairobi to Sydney and from Quito to Los Angeles this year as farmers delivered to end-customers as well as flower auction houses.

Supporting Valentine’s Day this week coincided with the publication of the Global Happiness Council’s 2019 report at the World Government Summit in Dubai - where the keynote speaker, actor and conservationist Harrison Ford, warned attendees to change their living habits as “nature doesn’t need people; people need nature”.

The Global Happiness Council (GHC) is a network of leading happiness and well-being scientists and key practitioners spanning psychology, economics, education, health, urban planning, civil society, business and government.

The GHC goal is to identify the best available evidence-based happiness and well-being policies to encourage their adoption and advancement at the local, national, and international levels.

In an introduction to the latest report Jeffrey Sachs, GHC director and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University New York, said the reason why nations around the world are signing up to the UAE’s Global Happiness and Well-being Coalition is because the “pursuit of happiness” idea should no longer be left to the individual or the marketplace.

“Happiness and well-being should be of paramount concern for all of society, engaging governments, companies, schools, healthcare systems and other sectors of society,” he explained.

As the UAE has acknowledged with its own citizens, more and more nations are learning that economic growth alone is not enough to produce happiness. In addition, as psychological science has demonstrated, happiness and well-being can now be measured and studied with rigor and there are new and effective public policies for raising societal wellbeing.

Sachs said this year’s GHC report aims not only to present best practices but also to outline how governments can proceed to put them into operation, “a kind of policy handbook for happiness.”

He added: “If we listened more carefully to the great moral teachers – Confucius, Buddha, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed – the broken link from wealth to happiness would of course not surprise us at all: ‘Tis better to give than receive’ is a proven path to personal happiness and social peace.”

What easier way than with flowers?